05-13-11: Tidal
A chameleon-like ability to follow every change in equipment is always a first little sign for neutrality of a speaker if one does not have or care about measurements.
Jörn - This comment struck me. A while back, I started an A'gon thread on the topic of neutrality. In it, I proposed a way to judge the neutrality of a component in cases where you do not have measurements. Here is what I wrote...
"Your system is becoming more neutral whenever you change a system element (component, cable, room treatment, etc.) and you get the following results:
(1) Individual pieces of music sound more unique.
(2) Your music collection sounds more diverse.
This theory occurred to me one day when I changed amps and noticed that the timbres of instruments were suddenly more distinct from one another. With the old amp, all instruments seemed to have a common harmonic element (the signature of the amp?!). With the new amp, individual instrument timbres sounded more unique and the range of instrument timbres sounded more diverse. I went on to notice that whole songs (and even whole albums) sounded more unique, and that my music collection, taken as a whole, sounded more diverse.
That led me to the following idea: If, after changing a system element, (1) individual pieces of music sound more unique, and (2) your music collection sounds more diverse, then your system is contributing less of its own signature to the music. And less signature means more neutral."
I'd be very interested to hear your reaction to this idea.
Bryon